War for Cybertron
For generations, the inhabitants of Cybertron lived in peace, under the joint leadership of the brothers Optimus Prime and Lord High Protector Megatron. While Megatron was firm, Prime was fair, and the two personalities created a balance. That changed, however, when Megatron sought the All Spark, which gave life to all Transformers. He raised an army, the Decepticons, who sought the All Spark to give them the power to conquer other worlds. To counter Megatron, Prime raised his own army, the Autobots. Although the Autobots fought bravely, the Decepticons were the more ferocious warriors, and Megatron began to gain ground. In a desperate move, Prime sent the All Spark into deep space, and Megatron pursued it. Both crashed on Earth, and disappeared for many years. The war became a search for the All Spark, with the Decepticons, led by Starscream, searching for both the All Spark and Megatron. The demigod Primus created the Transformers with the intention that they would all be righteous and obedient. However, his creations quickly became divided between the Autobots and Decepticons. (Grimlock once theorized that this was some kind of natural yin-yang balance.) According to the Liege Maximo, "When the first named Prime was created, so was the Liege Maximo. Moreover, from the Liege Maximo came the Decepticons and all their subsequent generations. Evil... is infinite!" According to Optimus Prime, as the original Transformers reproduced through a process similar to cell division, Primus's goodness became more and more diffuse in succeeding generations, and Transformers were arising who had none of "the essential purity of our creator's vision." A genetic fail-safe eventually kicked in, causing them to forget how to reproduce without the aid of the Creation Matrix. However, the moral dilution had already gone too far. The inevitable result was a planetary civil war, begun by Megatron, who sought to convert the planet into a "cosmic dreadnought." His goal was never realized, but the cataclysmic forces that the war unleashed pushed Cybertron out of its orbit around Alpha Centauri. As the planet careened through space, it was pulled toward Sol and a turning point in the war. The Main Asteroid Belt between Jupiter and Mars was in Cybertron's path, so Optimus Prime and an Autobot team abandoned the war briefly to launch the Ark and clear a path for their home world. They succeeded, but Megatron took advantage and attacked them immediately afterwards. That battle ended with the combatants crashing on prehistoric Earth and lying catatonic for four million years. Nevertheless, even with their great leaders gone, the Transformers on Cybertron continued their war. In the absence of the Creation Matrix (which was in Prime's chest), the Decepticons eventually rediscovered the lost method of "budding" reproduction. The resulting new Transformers were very powerful and completely devoid of morality. With each new Transformer created, there also appeared a strange by-product: a dark, cloudy mass that coalesced with other such masses and floated off into space, apparently harmless for the moment. Meanwhile, the "second-generation" Decepticons laid waste to the Autobot forces, but they were dissatisfied with the wasteland that Cybertron had become, so they left in search of new challenges. Many of the older Decepticons (perhaps all of them) remained on Cybertron and maintained control for millions of years. On Earth, the damaged Ark lay untouched beneath a volcano for four million years, but in 1984, a volcanic eruption jogged its systems and caused its computer to reactivate. The ship repaired its passengers, Autobot and Decepticon alike, and thus the war spread on Earth. Megatron established contact with Cybertron, and Lord Straxus, governor of the province of Polyhex, organized the construction of the first space bridge. Megatron planned to use it to ship energy from the resource-laden Earth to the barren Cybertron, but his plans never fully succeeded. At this time, the Cybertronian Autobots were mainly fighting in underground resistance movements. Their command centres were secret Autobases hidden in Decepticon territory. Optimus Prime and his companions were regarded as heroes (perhaps legends) by the freedom fighters, and news of their survival was welcomed joyously. However, global communication must have been inefficient, for that encouraging news never reached some 'Bots, such as Fortress Maximus and his small army. If Fort Max had heard about it, perhaps he never would have reached the despair that led him to leave Cybertron. Perhaps he and his companions never would have journeyed to the peaceful planet Nebulos, where they hoped to avoid the Transformers war. Then Scorponok and his minions wouldn't have followed them, and the disease of war would have passed over that world. However, that's not what happened. The Cybertronian Civil War did spread to Nebulos, and some of the humanoid residents joined the conflict by binary bonding to Transformer hosts, becoming the Headmasters and Targetmasters. The Transformers would eventually leave the planet (and its inhabitants poisoned their own fuel supply to keep them away). Nevertheless, the technology of binary-bondage would stay with the Transformers and become a new facet in the ongoing wars. Throughout this time, the war's two main battlegrounds remained Cybertron and Earth. Leadership squabbles were common, especially since neither side seemed to have a central command governing the armies on both planets. Developments on one front sometimes came as a surprise to the other. For instance, Prime seemed taken aback when he met the first two Autobot Micromaster patrols on Earth, and they had to explain the new Cybertronian trend of downsizing to conserve energy. However, the next major development in the war would do away with much disunity. The accidental waking of Primus alerted Unicron to Cybertron's location. Prime knew that the Matrix could defeat the chaos-bringer, so he sent teams looking for his own old corpse, which still bore it. However, they were beaten to the punch by the Decepticon Lord Thunderwing, who merged with the Matrix as the Primes had. Thunderwing turned it to evil and attacked the Autobots on board the space borne Ark. He was defeated and sent tumbling through space, but Prime made no effort to recover the Matrix again. Rather, he sought to prepare for Unicron's coming by trying to unite all Cybertronians. He surrendered to Scorponok on Earth in an effort to begin peace talks. One minor Decepticon civil war later, the combatants were all ready to lay down their arms. Then, suddenly, almost every Earthbound Transformer was transported by Primus to Cybertron. There they fought Unicron in a battle that destroyed Primus himself (along with Scorponok and many others). Thunderwing and the tainted Matrix reappeared, but even it couldn't defeat Unicron. However, when Optimus touched the Matrix, its evil was purged, and the full force of Primus's life essence was unleashed. The result was the destruction of both Unicron and the Matrix (and Optimus, in the explosion). For a short time, all Cybertronians were united, but Cybertron began to show signs of massive global deterioration. In the absence of Primus, it was theorized, the planet was falling apart. Their true natures showing through, the Decepticons sabotaged the Autobots' spacecraft and, under Bludgeon's command, sought out other worlds to conquer. Grimlock found replacement ships and led the Autobots in pursuit. Meanwhile, on Cybertron, Hi-Q (Optimus's Powermaster partner) and the Neo-Knights) found the Last Autobot, a guardian whom Primus had created to control the changes that Cybertron would undergo in his absence. Not only did the Last Autobot successfully guide Cybertron's re-creation, but he also re-made Hi-Q into a new version of Optimus Prime. Then they all went to the planet Klo, where Bludgeon's forces were slaughtering Grimlock's troops. The Last Autobot began resurrecting the dead Autobots, and the renewed armada was able to defeat the Decepticons. Bludgeon swore to exile his army in shame. The Autobots returned to the re-created Cybertron (although it's not known how the planet was changed), and peace existed for few years. However, Bludgeon was bolstering his forces by attacking far-off civilizations and stealing their technology. He also constructed an army of new Decepticons, but he needed the Matrix to bring them to life. For some reason, Prime still had the Matrix, so Bludgeon used his giant starship, the Warworld, to decimate Earth. He knew that Prime would return and defend the planet, so all he had to do was wait. During that waiting period, though, Megatron returned and destroyed Bludgeon, reassuming command. Prime, meanwhile, was occupied with other concerns. The second-generation Decepticons had returned from deep space, where they had been re-making planets in Cybertron's image. They considered the older Cybertronians inferior and small-minded, insects who could either join them or suffer the same fate as any other life forms. Jhiaxus, their Liege Centuro (sort of a field commander), became obsessed with hunting Prime down. Thus, when Prime learned about Bludgeon's attacks on Earth, he saw it as an opportunity to warn the Decepticons about the threat Jhiaxus posed to all Cybertronians. But Megatron rebuffed him and tried to take on Jhiaxus himself. The attempt failed, and Megatron returned to Prime, accepting the truce. Jhiaxus also came to Earth and attacked them. In the midst of the battle, suddenly there appeared the Swarm, that nebulous by-product of the second-generation Decepticons' creation. It had been wandering the galaxy, searching for the Transformers, and destroying metal as it went along. When it got to Earth, it began feasting on all Transformers, new and old, and the entire race nearly fell. Even Jhiaxus was destroyed. However, Prime was able to reclaim the Matrix, and when the Swarm devoured him, the power of the Matrix flowed through it. It was transformed into a force of life, with a new purpose (although it's not known what that purpose was). Prime was re-created, and he remained the leader of the Autobot-Decepticon alliance. Meanwhile, in a sector of space known as the "outer fringes," in a strange complex called the Hub, the Liege Maximo, supreme leader of the Decepticons, showed little grief over Jhiaxus's defeat. He also expressed his confidence in his forces, claiming that the day of reckoning would yet come for Prime and his "ridiculous" alliance. to make the game I've been waiting 25 years to play" said Tieger.[[|8]] The studio brought the concept and idea to Hasbro for approval. It began with a sketch of Bumblebee. "That was that first sketch that we slid across the table to Hasbro and said 'What do you guys think?' And that's where it all started" said Tieger.[[|8]] High Moon presented the idea of setting the game on Cybertron during the Transformers' civil war between the Autobots and Decepticons. Aaron Archer, Senior Design Director for Hasbro, stated of the Cybertron-based setting "that's a really cool place ... and the early days of that civil war between the Autobots and Decepticons was a story that hadn't really been fleshed out in any format."[[|8]] Each of the characters were totally redesigned for the game, taking cues from previous iterations from the Transformers lore. "What they've allowed us to do is take a licensed property and treat it like a brand new IP" stated Tieger.[[|8]] The vehicle modes for car-based characters initially consisted of wheels, however the developers found that it crippled gameplay by removing the player's ability to strafe while in vehicle mode. Taking the dilemma to Hasbro, the two companies agreed that characters would turn their wheels down and hover in while in vehicle mode, allowing for more movement. The vehicles would then revert to the traditional wheeled mode while using a character's boost, maintaining what the Transformers license had established with previous canon.[[|7]] The world of Cybertron was designed in such a way that the Transformers would have a proper scale on their homeworld. "It doesn't make sense that things would be smaller than them in their world," Tieger said, adding "the key character in scale was making their world gigantic and huge."[[|7]] Matt Krystek, Lead Designer at High Moon stated that since the game is not tied to a movie they were able to tell their own story. He cited the G1 universe as the inspiration for the game.[[|8]] Jim Daly, Lead Concept Artist at High Moon also cited the G1 universe as the main inspiration for the design of Cybertron itself, also stating that there were elements from Disney's TRON, Blade Runner, and the Aliens franchise.[[|8]] Hasbro's Aaron Archer stated the game would be only part of a bigger group of media. "This won't be the only touch point. It's a big place that we're going to build off of."[[|8]] At a BotCon 2010 panel, War for Cybertron Creative Director Matt Tieger stated Activision is currently in talks with Hasbro on creating additional titles. He also added that Hasbro is "considering" expanding the brand further into the realm of video games.[[|9]] Hasbro has released a toy line based on the War for Cybertron setting.[[|10]] Transforming figures of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron and Soundwave from the game have been released by Hasbro under the Transformers: Generations banner. Category:Sagas